Ah, AOL in the early 90s. A far different place than it is today. Back then, spam was kept in cans for the most part, and one could always get online during peak usage hours.
I first signed on to the service from an ad I saw on Prodigy. While I was familiar with the Internet, the WWW hadn't really made its splash yet, and I liked the crude graphics Prodigy presented. And since AOL had a cleaner interface than Prodigy (and, uh, they gave me boatloads of free time to beta test their Windows 3.1 software) I jumped ship rather quickly. Though I was a big fan of Usenet, for reasons that should be self-evident.
I immediately camped out in the discussion areas for (not a word about stereotypical geeks or queers, thankyewverymuch) Star Trek, Melrose Place (BTADFAN), and Beverly Hills 90210.
It was the latter group where I met someone claming to be the girlfriend of Jason Priestley. Now, I had spoken with people who made all sorts of claims online, so I treated her pretty much like anyone else, though others challenged her identity constantly.
A discussion arose once on the 90210 boards about a movie that Priestley had starred in called "Calendar Girl". I guess there was a scene in which Priestley and his co-stars visit a nude beach and some freak had used his freeze frame to capture a couple of frames in which you allegedly could see his penis.
This infuriated his girlfriend, Christine (who had also played his psychotic girlfriend on the show), to no end. She was adamant that all you could see was his butt.
Well, since I had downloaded the pictures in question as soon as they had hit Usenet, I couldn't resist. I sent Christine the pics in question.
She was a total newbie when it came to viewing images on her computer, though, and wrote me back asking for help. I tried to communicate this information via e-mail, which I'm usually good at, but we weren't getting anywhere.
I asked her to call me for further help, not really expecting her to take me up on the offer if she was really who she claimed to be. But she did, and as soon as I heard her voice, I knew it was her. She has a unique voice.
I guided her through downloading some kind of image viewer, and together, we viewed the images on our respective screens.
The frames (and there were only two) in question were rather blurry, but, indeed, you could see the anatomical feature in question. Christine kept saying "it looks DEFORMED!", and I couldn't stop laughing, asking her what she had done to make it so. There was certainly nothing erotic about the pics (well, he's got a cute ass), and Christine kept wondering what kind of freak would expend so much time and effort finding two frames out of millions that showed her boyfriend's peepee. I told her she should be thankful that her boyfriend wasn't Tom Cruise.
She thanked me, told me she and Jason would have a good laugh over this, and asked if she could do anything in return. I said an autographed photo of her and Jason would do fine.
Which is why two of my most prized possessions are addressed, "Hey, betcha never thought you'd help someone locate a movie star's dick, didja? Love, Christine" and "Thanks for showing my girlfriend just how deformed I am. XXXX, Jason"